The first copy of Creem I ever bought, August 1973
"Writing about music
is like dancing about architecture," Frank Zappa once said. Or was it Martin
Mull –or maybe Elvis Costello? Internet pundits have varying opinions on this
matter. However, we do know that Frank told a journalist ,"Rock
journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for
people who can't read."
Frank’s quote may actually apply more to current Interweb
music news items on Yahoo and AOL than the old-style print mags that inspired
his comment. Do we really need constant blog posts about X Factor contestants and American
Idol losers flubbing the National Anthem at football games? It makes me pine for the heyday of my three
favorite rock magazines- Circus, Creem, and Hit
Parader.
Circus combined mainstream newspaper-type journalism with behind-the-scenes interviews and reportage about rock bands. They weren’t gossipy or dirty. They gave fans straightforward news without much pontificating. The magazine was first published in 1966 under the name Hullabalo, but most people equate it with 1970s and 1980s hard rock and new wave. The weekly magazine covered everything Kiss, Aerosmith, Queen, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin oriented in the 1970s. Of course, the aforementioned bands shared column inches with any band that had a buzz at a given time. Circus didn’t discriminate based on genre. They were an equal opportunity mag. The March 16, 1978 cover featured Ted Nugent, but prominent articles on the Sex Pistols and the Ramones were also included. It wasn’t unusual to find an eclectic pop culture mish-mash edition with articles about Dan Fogelberg or Linda Ronstadt, popular comedians and TV shows (Steve Martin, Mork and Mindy, etc.) and controversial movies du jour like The China Syndrome sharing space with the obligatory Kiss article. And this mag had the best posters and full-page photos. After I finished scavenging my favorite articles for pin-ups, there was barely anything left in the mag. This explains why I don’t have any intact copies left to sell on eBay. The magazine folded in 2006 after focusing exclusively on heavy metal and hard rock since the mid-1980s.
Creem
Creem was a great magazine for suburban teens in the 1970s It looked like a music magazine, but it had a lot more than pretty pictures and
music reviews. It had dirty words, sexual terms you hadn’t learned yet,
semi-nudity, Lester Bangs and drug references. The music reviews read like a
combo of Naked Lunch, a pulp men’s
mag and Roget’s Thesaurus. You had to be
intellectual and perverted to understand
what was going on – a perfect combo for me. Also, what was that exactly on the June 1976 cover, hmmm? (See above pic.) I
don’t think the proprietors of the local
drugstore in Hometown, Ill. where I bought it even noticed it. I hardly knew
what it was, but pot and peppermint schnapps were the hardest stuff for a junior
high kid in the ‘burbs back then. I learned a lot from Creem, and not all of it
music-related. I first discovered the
existence of absinthe, cock rings and bondage gear from Creem. But I first read
about the Runaways, Patti Smith, the New York Dolls and T-Rex from Creem while
everyone in the neighborhood was listening to Donny and Marie. I read Pamela
Des Barres’ column, Miss
Eleganza, Creem Profiles, Confessions of a Film Fox and learned all about
Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. (Even at 12, I was the
resident neighborhood weirdo.) I convinced my babysitter to watch the New York Dolls
on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert one Friday, after reading about them in Creem. When I saw her again Monday
morning, she was thoroughly befuddled by the performance. “When you said “New
York Dolls”, I thought you were talking about a bunch of weird ladies.”
The first copy of Creem I ever bought in 1973 had articles
about Androgeny In
Rock, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Jeff Beck and plenty of pics of glam-era David
Bowie, Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan and Iggy Pop. One of the
first record reviews I read was by Patti Smith. I couldn’t tell you what band
she reviewed, but I sure did like the way she wrote about them. A few years
ago, one of my friends showed me an old stack of Creems from the ‘70s and ‘80s.
I looked through ‘em, but somehow they didn’t pack the same forbidden punch as they
did when I was twelve. By the late ‘70s Debbie Harry ,the Sex Pistols and the
Ramones were common subjects, along with lesser-known punk bands that Circus
and Hit Parader neglected. (Destroy All Monsters, the Dictators, etc.) Creem
may or may not exist today. This New York Times article details the struggle to revive the magazine. Creem’s archives, however, are up and running.
Hit Parader
Hit Parader, first published in 1942, printed popular song
lyrics of the day. Even when pop music styles changed to rock, punk and new
wave, the mag still published lyrics. Alice Cooper lyrics were far removed from
“How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?”, but fans still wanted to sing along.
One of the first Hit Paraders I bought
–in ’74 or ’75, had a great interview with John Lennon conducted by Lisa
Robinson, one of the most prolific rock scribes of the time.
The photos weren’t as glossy as the ones in Circus, but I still plastered the walls
with them, especially in the early ‘80s, when the magazine’s articles seemed to
get shorter-only a page or two-with short to non-existent interviews. Like
Circus, Hit Parader didn’t take musical sides back then- one month Van Halen
was on the cover; the next month, the Clash. It wasn’t a “punk” versus “metal”
culture then. It was all good. Once the mid-1980s rolled around, the magazine
changed format to heavy metal/hard rock exclusively. It’s the only one of the three mags that still exists today, with a “none more
black” website design and cover stories on Slipknot and similar bands.